Monday, July 4, 2016

Let's Review: Deadpool

I’ll be entirely honest when I say that this film had me
worried. As a Deadpool fan I had already been massively disappointed by his
appearance in the X-Men Origins: Wolverine film; and I know for a fact that I’m
not the only one. Like most characters
in fiction, Deadpool has a special place in the hearts of the fans and we want
to see the character given the proper adaptation that he deserves. From the
interviews you could tell that the people running this project had a passion for
this character and that can mean all the difference. So did Deadpool disappoint
every fan’s dreams again? Let’s review Deadpool.

The
Negative

The villain was sorely underdeveloped. I can’t exactly
blame them either. Deadpool’s tone has the ride the edge of being a crude
comedy while also retelling some of the darker aspects of the character.
Deadpool certainly has some skeletons in his closet and the overly dark nature
of such things would have been ill fitting in the tone that the film was going
for. Having a villain that was mostly nondescript certainly didn’t hurt as it
was easy to have the villain simply be a villain for evils sake. Though I do
wonder what kind of film could have been made had we flipped the coin and
sought to adapt the character’s darker nature instead.

Some people will never be happy. Certainly I’ve been on
both ends of this sword before, but they did have to change certain aspects of
Deadpool’s story in order to allow it to flow better as a cohesive plotline for
the film. Now I’ve never been one to shy away from saying that the source
material is better (which it is) but the changes made here really aren’t that
bad considering the end result. I’m saying that I understand if certain fans
will feel jaded but I for once was not affected by the changes made.

The
Positive

The reason the changes didn’t really bother me is because
as fans we got WAY more than I was every expecting to receive. Despite having
to change certain aspects of the story I have never seen a more pure adaptation
of a comic book character than with this film. What we got was the character Deadpool
in a movie and I could not have been happier. Even better the film also adapted
a great deal of Deadpool’s personal side characters, which is something even
the video game didn’t do. Little touches like that certainly proved to me that
this was a passion project by the producers and it really paid off for them.

Not only was this a good superhero film, it was also one
of the best comedies I have seen in a long time. I cannot remember the last
time I laughed so hard in a theater. Between the opening credits sequence that
went out of its way to insult everybody who had worked on this film to the
series of 4th wall breaks where Deadpool addressed us all
personally, I was simply overjoyed to see that the tone of this character was
captured so magnificently.

In
Conclusion

This was by all means a really good film, a film that I
will probably find myself re-watching multiple times over the years whenever I
feel like I need a good laugh. I’m sure I stand with many in the awe and wonder
that allowed this film to be made so perfectly for the fans. Even if you are
not a longtime fan of Deadpool, I highly recommend checking out this film as it
will certainly try its hardest to get you there. 4.9 out of 5.